Lisa Isherwood and Mark Jordan, Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots: Essays in Honour of Marcella Althaus-Reid, SCM Press, 2010.
Argentinian theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid was a pioneer in the field of queer theology. In her books Indecent Theology and The Queer God (both on Routledge), she insistently queried the sexual and gender suppositions of Christianity and theology. In particular, she relentlessly pushed the liberation theology of Latin America, demanding that its vision of social justice for the poor expand to include–even centre–women and GLBT people and the multiplicity of desires and practices involved in sexual subcultures. In the striking introduction to Indecent Theology, she asked if theology had space for female vendors on the streets of Buenos Aires, who sell lemons without wearing underwear. Theologians, she suggests, must remember their own bodies, their own desires: “The Argentinian theologian would then like to take off her underwear to write theology with feminist honestly, not forgetting what it is to be a woman when dealing with theological and political categories.”
Sadly, Althaus-Reid died of breast cancer in 2009, leaving behind not only those two important books, but writing and editing numerous innovative books on feminist, body, liberation, queer and transgender theologies in partnership with Lisa Isherwood on SCM. Fittingly then, Isherwood has, with Harvard theologian Mark Jordan, assembled a collection entitled Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots on that press that not only pays homage to Althaus-Reid’s legacy, but extends it.
Many of the contributors slip out of academic distance to talk about their own relationships with Althaus-Reid, and her influence on their own thought. A fascinating portrait of a complex theologian emerges. Isherwood describes “a Quaker who carried more than one rosary on her person at all times and when, in London, often visited the British Museum to offer a gift to Bast, the cat goddess of the night [. . .] she distrusted Marionology but had medals of Mary and saints around her neck along with a medal of Frida Kahlo.”
Althaus-Reid’s struggle as a queer woman in the masculinist liberation theology world appears a number of times, with anecdotes about her being snubbed at conferences and churches by men, as well as her own generosity in encouraging other Latin American queer theologians in their work. Andre Musskopf recounts her telling him as a PhD student “you see, I keep telling people there is gay theology in Latin America and people keep telling me it is something in my head. Send me your materials to publish” and then striding off. Other contributors remember her distinctive fetish boots and striking presence in conservative theology departments.
Stand-out chapters include Kwok Pui Lan’s take on postcolonial theology, where she discusses the Orientalist legacy of colonial sexuality in China, and Kathleen Sands’ chapter on the fight for civil unions and respectability in Hawai’i. Athaus-Reid’s work was something of a polemic against decency, and it’s interesting to see Sands balancing that urge as a white mainlander with the homonormative pro-gay marriage and sometimes homophobic de-colonial discourses in the Hawai’ian islands. And Susannah Cornwall’s “Stranger in Our Midst” shows the true strangeness of Althaus-Reid’s writing, the encouragement to see the multiplicity of the divine, to see its entirety without airbrushing out the less acceptable parts of humanity.
There’s a palpable spirit of generosity in the writers’ usage of Althaus-Reid’s work, with her thought pushed into new and occasionally unexpected situations. Mary Hunt reads Althaus-Reid as a kind of surrealist artist mixing genres and influences, albeit one grounded in the vision of a better world for the most marginal of identities excluded from the purview of what Althaus-Reid called “vanilla theology.” Mark Jordan takes a similar route in seeing Althaus-Reid’s as a kind of camp theology, one interested in a kitsch, queer God that unsettles orthodoxies. In perhaps the most intriguing piece, Lisa Isherwood’s chapter takes Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues as a way of talking as a woman, imagining what her vagina would say if it could talk. Like Althaus-Reid’s underwear-free lemon vendors, this is a wild and provocative way of doing theology.
In the midst of this, Graham Ward’s chapter is something of an anomaly, with Ward critiquing Althaus-Reid’s work for being fuzzily post-Kantian on epistemology and ignoring the currently fashionable Hegelianism of theology. While this is usually par for the course for academic writing, in the context of a book that is essentially an academic eulogy, this comes across as unnecessary one-up-manship, perhaps even mean-spirited.
Still, Dancing Theology in Fetish Boots is, as the striking title suggests, an intriguing collection of mismatched elements that sheds new light on sexuality, gender and race in religious locations. It is clear that the contributors felt that Althaus-Reid’s work set a challenge to them to produce speculative, even inspiring, theological, and in the main part, they have succeeded well. A wonderful tribute to a wonderful thinker.
Marcella Althaus-Reid is one of my favorite theologians. Several year s ago, I was introduced to both her Indecent Theology and her The Queer God. From these two works, my favorite is Indecent Theology. It does indeed takes great courage for a scholar to write such work. Althaus-Reid is, by no any means, timid. Indecent Theology has truly given me, as a “tricontinental” human being, a voice in Anglo-America.
Unlike The Queer God, I find Indecent Theology, on the one hand, very provocative. Main stream theologians (Euro-Americans) quickly dismiss this work as not true theology for it is not written by a white male. “Take up the white man’s burden.” Althaus-Reid Reid argues that the theologian must do theology without calzones. Indeed! If the theologian is serious about doing theology with the people, then the theologian must take off her/his underwear and let the smell of limones come out the male or female genitalia. Put differently, come out the closet of systematic theology.
The Queer God, on the other hand, universalizes the experience of queer people. It seems to me that, if the theologian is going to queer God, then the theologian must queer God by utilizing the experience of people of color. People of color’s experience must count. It also seems to me that, if the theologian is serious about the queerization of God, then the theologian must choose between a white vagina and a brown or black vagina. By the same token, if the theologian is serious about doing theology, then is she/he doing theology in the image of a white or brown verga? White vaginas have, historically, been complicit in the creation of God in the image of the European penises that have become the center of the universe. Today, God has been created in the image of white vergas, but not without the help of white vulvas. Jasbir K. Puar in her Terrorist Assemblage argues that, in last three decades, white queers are buying into the idea of empire building by embracing “American exceptionalims.” Althaus-Reid does not point out that white queer people must come out the closet of racism that dehumanizes people of color. “Take up the white man’s burden.” And I will add, take up the white woman’s burden.
In short, one cannot do a fair critique of Althaus-Reid’s work if one utilizes only European or Anglo-American’s worldviews or academic techniques. Anglo-America academia is prompt to point out Hernando Cortes or Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Americas. They miserable fail to point out that the US has also had several Corteses or Pizarros. Isaiah Bowman is just one example of US conquistadores to the Americas. My theological quest has thought me that every empire in history must have an imperial theology. The US is not, by any means, an empire without a theology. As Althaus-Reid points out that there are, in Buenos Aires, limoneras because Latin America has, historically, suffered from violent processes of imperialism. “Imperialisms are, by definition, criminal activities of expansion, possession and control; theology’s permanent search for coherence is only an expression of its hegemonising objectives, a taxonomy” (Indecent Theology, 24). Latin@s must realize, then, that Latin Americans have been going to be with God, a white penis, for the first time without a condom. White vulvas have had full knowledge of this.